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ThB hanging and thaDErinanenl! 



IN 



LIBERAL EDUCATION 




NEWTON LLOYD ANDREWS. 



i 



The Changing and 



THE Permanent 



IN 



Liberal Education. 






Delivered at Hamilton, N. Y., June I5tli, 1904, before the Alumni 
Association of Colgate University, and reprinted from their Report. 






Gift 
Author 

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Z^t Cl^angxng anb tJ)e l^ermanent in Jtiberal 

OEDucation* 

A MONG the many movements affecting the higher interests 
-^ ^ of society during recent decades none has been more con- 
spicuous than that which has modified collegiate educa- 
tion. Marked tendencies toward change have made headway, 
and concession has been more common than opposition. 

Have we then a ''new education?" Have traditional methods 
and aims been superseded? Do the changes touch what is vital, 
or are the best values conserved? Is a reaction to be desired, or 
shall the present trend go on? These are questions to which an 
intelligent answer can be given, only as we search for elements 
fixed and variable, and so discover the changing and the perma- 
nent in liberal education. 

It is not a question, of new subjects or new methods of 
advanced instruction, for education and instruction are not iden- 
tical. Higher instruction may be quite different from liberal 
education. Moreover, the term "liberal" does not necessarily 
mean "bountiful." Plentifulness of subjects does not guarantee 
liberal training. Higher education, in order to be liberal, must 
have a distinctive scope, aim, and spirit. Its extent does not make 
it so, but rather its content and intent. Knowledge sought and 
used only as equipment for an occupation, a trade, a profession, 
may be marvelously minute and extensive, but it is not liberal. 

We must distinguish, as Plato did, those studies which are 
pursued "not with the view of making any of them a profession, 
but only as a part of education, and because a private gentleman 
.and a freeman ought to know them." So the "liberal arts" of the 
mediaeval time were those deemed necessary to freemen, and 
deficient though they were in range, had high value in developing 
human capacity. 

A similar conception determined the type of education which 
has been known as "collegiate." To give a training "which 



enlarges, and disciplines the mind, and makes it master of its own 
powers, irrespective of the particular business or profession one 
may follow" has been the recognized province of the college. 

Now the studies of a technical or a professional school have 
predominantly a different purpose. The multiplication of such 
schools, and the establishment in Universities properly so-called 
of professional and technical courses for graduate students, has 
been a natural and legitimate advance. Let there be no con- 
temptuous estimate of such courses as "Brodstudien," but let 
it be clearly recognized that their purpose is not primarily cul- 
tural. The instruction given may be more advanced than that 
of the college, but in so far as it is specialized, it is not liber- 
alizing. No study can be such by itself. The united influence 
of several informing and disciplinary branches of knowledge 
addressing and developing diverse powers is necessary to liberal 
education. For this work of general training the colleges have 
long stood, and in so far as any of them have abandoned this 
position by the encouragement of undue specialization, they have 
taken the risk of promoting a kind of education no longer broad 
and liberal. 

Not he in whom some one capacity is trained, but the mind 
that is in some good measure master of its varied powers, and 
can bring to bear its whole self in effective effort is really educated. 
The enlargement is not chiefly in knowledge, as the increased 
dimensions of a storehouse may accommodate larger contents. 
It is a result of exercised faculties, a matter of organic growth. 
Pabulum is requisite for this living process, and that food must 
be knowledge, but it nourishes only through assimilation. Not 
always, perhaps never, does knowledge once for all exhaust its 
ministry. Retained and reproduced, it renews its service, per- 
ennially re-enforcing the intellectual life. Moreover, we may not 
doubt that much, once appropriated but now escaping recog- 
nition, has only sifted down to those depths of our nature where 
personality is nurtured, the very source of thought, feeling, action. 
Certainly such a conception of education cannot be permanently 
obscured. 

A view entirely in harmony with this is sometimes expressed 
in a familiar scientific phrase. We are told that education should 
adjust us to our environment. As man belongs to the physical 



world, he needs some knowledge of its laws and forces, and of his 
own organism as subject thereto. As a member of society, he 
must deal in thought and speech with his fellows, and so re- 
quires training in language. Furthermore, he must know some- 
thing of the ideas and sentiments in which human life has ex- 
pressed itself, and which in turn have reacted upon life. He 
cannot then forego literature. It will help him interpret the tone 
and temper of his time. The culture which comes, as Matthew 
Arnold says, from knowing the best that has been thought and 
said, is no mere matter of inward satisfaction. It affords need- 
ful orientation in contemporary life. Education must ''enable 
a man to know himself and the world." 

There must be adjustment to the body politic, that citizenship 
may be intelligent and noble. Government can be worthily 
understood only through history. And who can adjust himself 
to his fellows either politically or socially, unless he knows him- 
self? This self-discovery on the intellectual and moral side will 
be quite inadequate without psychology and ethics. Nay, as 
respects both these departments of his nature, unless one is still 
to ''grope about in worlds unrealized," philosophy and religion 
must afford their infinite outlook. 

If "adjustment to environment" means all this, such education 
will have breadth, and balance, and proportion. Its processes 
will result in that discipline and command of varied faculties 
which is traditionally associated with "liberal education." The 
new phrase describes only another aspect of the one reality. 

But, it is urged that, as the educated man must find his place 
in the activities of the world, he should be so instructed and 
trained as first to find himself, in other words, to discover his 
aptitudes. As an educational principle, however, this must be 
subordinate to the higher aim of general development. How 
indeed can adaptation be properly proved except through 
acquaintance with a variety of studies which shall adequately test 
manifold capacities? Certainly, special aptitudes should not be 
hastily pre-supposed, and they are rarely hard and fast limitations. 
"A man who is good for anything," said one of our humorists, 
"is good for something else." To become oneself, in some good 
degree of roundness, is in the best sense to find oneself, and this 
should take precedence of finding one's place. When, moreover, 



6 

that place is found, he is worth most to himself and to society, 
who by his breadth of general attainments has largest inward 
resources, and widest sympathy with the training and pursuits 
of others. 

In the light of these definitions, let us consider certain current 
changes in collegiate education. Among them, what is more 
obvious than the greater diversity in those who offer themselves 
for educational shaping? In earlier days the college was pri- 
marily for those intending the learned professions. The minister, 
the lawyer, the physician, and the teacher, required, by general 
consent, liberal training, and "liberal" meant ''balanced," ''sym- 
metrical." If other young men, from well-to-do families, went 
to college, a sufficient reason was seen in the intrinsic value of 
general culture. Recent decades have shown a large increase in 
those looking forward to mercantile and manufacturing pursuits. 
Others come without definite purpose, moved chiefly by a vague 
thought of the advantage of a baccalaureate degree, or attracted 
by the widely reported charms of college life. Again, compe- 
tition among colleges, due in part to the feeling that size marks 
success, has made it easier, by the aid of scholarships, to obtain 
a college course. The result is that our student communities rep- 
resent widely varying interests, and some of these interests are 
but scantily educational. Indeed, prominent educators have 
specially emphasized the claims of great institutions as affording 
to young men opportunities for the largest acquaintance with 
those who are to share with them the leadership of their genera- 
tion — an acquaintance likely to be commercially and socially ad- 
vantageous. What wonder then, if students in other ways sub- 
ordinate the essential to the incidental? 

The changed constituency of the colleges has had great influ- 
ence upon courses and methods of study. The Faculties and 
Trustees have come to vie with one another in concessions to 
supposed popular demands. This has brought the danger of 
being untrue to the ideals of liberal education. Had there been 
among some half as much eagerness to show young men and 
their parents what liberal training is, and what it is worth, as 
there was haste in making innovations, more would have been 
conserved of what experience had found worthy to be permanent 
elements in our educational processes. 



Besides, may it not fairly be questioned whether our colleges 
are not likely to be too generally and indiscriminately attractive? 
Should every young man who wishes vaguely, and for no intelli- 
gent and adequate reason, to enter college, be encouraged to do 
so? Is any limitation desirable? Ought any line to be drawn? 
Certainly not any line drawn by considerations of wealth, birth, or 
purpose in study. But may we not properly desire as prereq- 
uisites the possession of some fair measure of intellectual capacity, 
and a settled disposition to intellectual effort? Time was when 
gifted young men were considered to be especially marked out 
for collegiate advantages. Is the pursuit of advanced studies for 
the real interest of those whom nature has not endowed with 
suitable gifts? I venture to think that if college authorities err 
in retaining such students, a graver responsibility often rests on 
teachers in secondary schools who have been ready to send to col- 
lege pupils of slender abilities. He who has himself received a lib- 
eral training should have insight to discover intellectual gifts, for 
the young are sometimes only half conscious of them, and should 
encourage the capable to develop them most broadly. But why 
send to college those whose capacity and disposition to study 
are alike mediocre? 

Samuel J. Tilden once said "some men's minds are like the soil 
of the Adirondacks, naturally thin, and soon exhausted by cultiva- 
tion." Yet many such minds, assiduously applied to the prac- 
tical pursuits of life, and educated by their occupation and their 
experience, have little occasion to regret the lack of collegiate 
advantages. Will it be said that if some seek the colleges who 
do not adequately profit by them, yet "the fittest will survive?" 
Yes — but why not save from waste and loss and disappointment 
those whose struggle for existence seems foredoomed to failure? 

Conspicuous among changes in collegiate education during 
recent decades are many new subjects of study, and some new 
methods of teaching. The older alumni of most American col- 
leges find in the present curricula an array of subjects fairly 
startling. The earlier, aggressive invaders of the old order were 
the sciences of nature. In the olden time two prescribed terms of 
"natural philosophy," one of which dealt with mechanics, and 
the other with physics, another term of astronomy, and one or 
two of chemistry and geology, made up the ordinary provision 



8 

for the study of science. Now chemistry and geology offer elec- 
tive courses running through three or four years, while physics 
and biology extend over periods hardly shorter. 

The modern languages are open to students in many succes- 
sive terms. English literature presents not a few attractive 
vistas, and courses in history are hardly less numerous. Psychol- 
ogy and philosophy have larger place, and mathematics a wider 
range. The ancient languages do not lack courses, even if they 
lack students. Political economy, sociology, the history of art, 
and not a few other subjects, are also included in the bill of fare. 
Much the greater part are elective. To partake of all is impos- 
sible. The ''table d'hote" has g-iven way to service "a la carte.'' 

After the Freshman year, there is little attempt as of old to 
secure a balanced course of study. Symmetry in training may 
be conceded to be good, but few are urged to seek it. Colgate, 
it is true, by an arrangement of groups in the Sophomore year, 
implies a judgment that the entering Sophomore is not yet pre- 
pared for an unrestricted range. The general tendency of the 
time is to make little restriction. The several departments offer 
as many courses as the individual professor is able to carry, and 
if there are assistants in any department, the number of courses 
is proportionally increased. As professors and instructors are 
but human, it is only natural so to emphasize their respective sub- 
jects that students will hardly be reminded of the value and im- 
portance of other work. Indeed, a student may hastily assume 
that some particular subject meets his special needs, and is 
adapted to his purpose in life, or in harmony with his ideal of 
education, when as yet he knows too little of other subjects to 
warrant an intelligent judgment. 

No wonder that young men are bewildered by the multitude 
of elective courses, and are prompted to exclaim : ''There are so 
many things we should like, we do not know what to take!" 
Some of us who had our training in the days of prescribed courses 
may not altogether regret that our subjects of study were chosen, 
and the time allotted to each was determined, by those who were 
presumed to be more competent than we to decide what should 
be studied and how long, and who sought to devise a curriculum 
wisely balanced in the interests of general culture. Must the 
introduction of other subjects cause the abandonment of all effort 



to secure symmetry? Shall different elective courses be deemed 
competitive, so that teachers shall be concerned only about the 
attendance upon their own classes? Rather let each cherish a 
generous interest in the courses of his colleagues, not simply as a 
matter of inter-departmental courtesy, but as himself recognizing 
the value to every student of the broadest possible range of study. 
Let each be unselfishly glad also when any who have not satis- 
factorily responded to his own special discipline, become else- 
where intellectually alert through wakening aptitudes for other 
work. 

The old-time curriculum embodied the judgment and the ex- 
perience of educated men concerning the nature and the extent 
of those studies which belonged to liberal training. Among all 
the changes that have come, is not the guidance of experience a 
permanent need? Must we give up the thought of directing the 
studies of young men ? For one, I believe that if collegiate educa- 
tion is to remain truly liberal, the principle of guidance must in 
some form be an abiding element in our plans. It has indeed 
been proposed that every college student should have among his 
professors an assigned adviser. To what extent such an idea 
has been realized I do not know, but the importance of the ar- 
rangement is clear. 

Obviously^ the adviser should be a man of all possible sym- 
metry and breadth of culture, and of an impartiality so absolute 
that he could advise, if necessary, against the taking of his own 
courses. To a man of the right quality such a relation would 
offer a most enviable opportunity for usefulness. Mere admin- 
istrative capacity is not comparable to this sort of service. Any 
teacher might welcome such access to the very springs of the 
student's intellectual life. If our colleges are still to stand for 
liberal training, they must in some such way seek to protect their 
students from pursuing at random narrow, ill-balanced courses. 

Collegiate methods of instruction have experienced change. 
Laboratory work is a comparatively new feature, and its value is 
obvious. Every student should know something of the scientific 
processes. Such work, however, deserves concentrated attention, 
and ought never to be degraded by listless dawdling; nor ought 
it to be pursued through many courses without the balancing 
influence of studies in language, literature, and philosophy. Other- 



10 

wise, it is a technical discipline, not a constituent of general 
culture. . 

The lecture-method has come into large use, and not always 
with the happiest results. It has become especially common since 
college professors have been chiefly chosen from those who have 
pursued University courses. Such men have been prone to use 
with college students methods similar to those which gave direc- 
tion to their own graduate studies. They have not been careful 
to ascertain whether their pupils are prepared for them. That 
lectures are often very welcome to students may only signify that 
to take notes and to be quizzed upon them requires less severe 
work than to master a text-book. My own judgment is that text- 
books are best for the handling of most college subjects. Not 
unseldom the lecture-method flatters both instructor and pupil at 
the expense of both. Certainly, if the teacher's modesty will 
permit him to regard another's presentation of any subject as 
fairly equal to what he might himself give, there is ample oppor- 
tunity in the discussions of the class-room to elucidate, to criticise, 
and to supplement, and so to cultivate in the mind of the student 
that general attitude towards all books which will prepare him to 
be a careful, thoughtful, independent reader. 

Above all, lecture-methods are unfortunate, if used to such an 
extent as to diminish unduly the training of the student in the 
power and habit of reproduction. The capacity to grasp and re- 
state the thought of others can hardly be overvalued. It tends to 
mutual understanding in society and in business. Without it the 
largest reading yields but vague and confused impressions. And 
who does not need it that listens to public address ? For one who 
is himself to speak or to write it should be deemed indispensable. 
To apprehend clearly the statements of a text-book, to seize and 
hold the logical relations of the author's thought, and to present 
consecutively and effectively a train of reasoning or course of 
exposition, is an intellectual gymnastic. But it is not discipline 
for discipline's sake. It is directly helpful to the vigorous devel- 
opment of one's own thinking, and to the clear communication of 
thought. Mere memoriter work may be mechanical and deaden- 
ing, but a right reproduction is vitalizing, ^schylus says, that 
memory is "mother of the muses." Its proper training should 
have permanent place in our education. 



11 

In examining further the changes which appear in our col- 
leges, it is proper to consider whether the student's own attitude 
is altered. Every educated man, even the liberally educated man, 
is essentially self-educated. How then shall he lack that energiz- 
ing spirit which the very word ''student" implies? Must he not 
be moved by a genuine ''studium?" And that is fondness, zeal, 
endeavor, application, exertion, assiduity ! Is not, however, the 
*'studium" of average college life unduly diverted, and in some 
measure misdirected? The scholarly spirit has certainly lost 
somewhat of prestige. To every entering student comes the ob- 
trusive voice, *'It is proper that you should know games ; for a 
man has no greater glory, so long as he lives, than that which he 
accomplishes with his hands or his feet." So much of Homer is 
made almost compulsory by the most pronounced non-Hellenists. 
In matters athletic there is absorbing interest. O for a steadier 
glow of eagerness in things scholarly and intellectual ! 

Again, is there a still abiding desire of knowledge for the very 
sake of knowledge? Yes — but in far too many the commercial, 
materialistic time-spirit has fostered the feeling that only the so- 
called ''practical" is worth the knowing, and study is too largely 
prompted by utilitarian considerations. Even on this plane, how- 
ever, it is quite impossible to say of any acquisition that it may 
not in some unforeseen way prove of value. Eet us insist, of 
course, that knowledge which develops thought, ministers to life, 
and prompts to service, is highest of all, but to the man of liberal 
education knowledge itself is an unfailing source of intellectual 
satisfaction. 

Perhaps the principle of election in studies may be deemed 
a frank confession that we can no longer hold up as a 
potent ideal the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, but that 
adaptation and interest must wholly decide the student's work. 
But the elective principle may not wisely be so radically applied 
as prematurely to assume adaptations of a limited, exclusive sort ; 
nor must interest as a pedagogic principle hold undivided sway. 
Naturally, every college teacher appreciates the elective system 
for the relief that is found in securing willing students for 
advanced courses. The reluctant have no longer to be dragged 
to water which they will not drink. But even here perhaps con- 
sideration for the instructor's comfort ought not always to out- 



12 

weigh the student's need. The interest of some in certain studies 
seems not unmixed with a more or less vague sense that those 
subjects mark the Hne of least resistance. The presupposition of 
tastes and aptitudes for mathematical and scientific work in young 
men prepared on that side for admission to college is not always 
justified by their college record, for both adaptation and interest 
prove sometimes deficient ; and instructors in the ancient classics 
cannot always be sure that others would have been so much inter- 
ested in the old paths, if those paths could be traveled only by 
pedestrians, unaided by the equine race. 

For truly liberal education there are other tests of value than 
interest. One of them, let it be boldly said, is difiiculty. Some 
studies are good, because they are hard. It is said there were too 
many hard places in our older fixed courses, but it is now quite too 
possible to leave hard things out. Who can doubt what would be 
the testimony of men twenty years out of college ? Some of them 
remember the thrill of satisfaction which came with the solution, 
after patient effort, of a difficult mathematical problem, or with 
the discovery, clear and full, of the meaning of a puzzling Greek 
or Latin passage. Such experiences are formative. As in the 
moral life and the practical life, so in the intellectual life, the high- 
est success comes through the mastery of obstacles. The accept- 
ance of what is hard, the facing and conquering of difficulties is 
tonic. Liberal education ought to set a man free from his moods, 
so that he can bring himself to his duty, whether it be or be not in- 
teresting, and grapple with it promptly and resolutely in spite of 
all listlessness and of any counter attractions. Providence has not 
ordered life wholly on the elective plan. Perplexities and diffi- 
culties are largely prescribed. The man whose studies have been 
chosen only for their interest is ill-prepared for the world. 

Professor Ladd says : "The studies in my college curriculum 
were wholly prescribed ; they included the ancient classics in 
Junior year, and calculus, both integral and differential. I was 
especially fond of Greek and philosophy, but I 'studied calculus 
with more carefulness on that very account. I learned to do 
patiently the things set me to do, to work hard and wait for the 
reward, to conquer every task, whatever it might be, before leav- 
ing it. And I would not give this bit of learning for all that is 
to be got from the most attractive elective courses of Harvard and 



13 

Yale." A host of witnesses would bear like testimony. Let us 
welcome the interest which means inclination, but let us help 
young men to see and seek their interest in that other, quite as 
important meaning — their advantage. The profit of a study may 
make impertinent the question of liking or disliking. 

The drift toward change in modern education sometimes 
appears in the spirit of haste. Study is superseded by cramming, 
and education is thought to consist in the passing of examinations. 
Colleges in turn consent to shorten the period of residence. In- 
stead of frankly insisting that four years are not too long to en- 
sure that growth which a baccalaureate degree should signify, they 
announce a certain number of term-hours as constituting their 
requirement for graduation, and even point out to the entering 
student that the addition of certain extra hours to the term's quota 
will make it possible to take his degree in a shorter time. Because 
the fuller and stricter requirements of medical and law schools 
demand longer professional study, the inference is often drawn 
that the student's liberal training must be abbreviated. What, 
however, does the welfare of society demand ? Is there any clear 
call from the public announcing their impatient haste to entrust 
their property interests to the young lawyer, or the care of their 
health to the young physician? He who assumes this may dis- 
cover to his pain that maturity of mind and breadth of training 
promise even a pecuniary advantage to him who bides his time. 

Already in educational circles there is a wholesome reaction 
against such innovations. Since the proposition to give college 
students the baccalaureate degree at the end of two years was 
broached by a college president who is himself so shining an 
example of liberal culture that one could almost have suspected 
his suggestion to be an ironical ''reductio ad absurdum," the ques- 
tion seems lulled to rest. Requiescat in pace. The absurdity was 
quickly revealed by the illuminating inquiry, "Who that ever had 
to do with Sophomores could think them fit to be graduated?" 

The setting of examinations is not teaching, and the passing of 
examinations is not education. Knowledge thus acquired is too 
apt to slip away, and even if retained, is often inorganic material 
not easily assimilated and transmuted for mental growth. Edu- 
cative processes demand time. There must be opportunity for 
reflection, and even for unconscious absorption and infiltration. 



14 

It is a misfortune for the student to be altogether engrossed with 
work even in subjects commanding his interest. Let not acqui- 
sition outrun digestion. One may trace the trend of history with- 
out being overladen with its multitudinous events. Some of our 
predecessors whose Latin and Greek lessons were shorter may 
have known quite as intimately the spirit of antiquity. So too, 
the characteristic methods of physical science may be rightly 
understood, and the practical applications of its laws or the phil- 
osophic bearings of its theories may be clearly discerned, without 
encyclopaedic acquaintance with scientific phenomena. In short, 
less knowledge of any sort, gained without hurry, and thought- 
fully appropriated, is far more liberalizing than hasty accumu- 
lations. 

Imperfect and narrow as the older college curriculum was, it 
did not expose the student to the risk of attempting too much, nor 
did it invite him to shorten his stay. More might have been 
exacted, and by many might have been accomplished, but the 
margin of freedom had value. In those days, when courses in 
English Literature and in History were meagre or did not exist, 
students not a few made fruitful use of their leisure in exten- 
sive, voluntary reading, not always perhaps most wisely directed, 
but inspired by a true intellectual enthusiasm, and so ministering 
richly to their general culture, and the development of an his- 
toric judgment and a literary sense. Haste, cram, and pressure 
could not have developed them, nor would assigned reading have 
had the same value. 

Amidst all that is changing, it must still be a prerequisite 
for truly liberal education that the teacher shall be a man of 
broadly cultured mind. He should himself illustrate the worth 
of such a training. A specialist he must be, but he ought to be 
more — a liberally educated specialist. No group of narrow men, 
however proficient each may be in his specialty, should consti- 
tute a college Faculty. They might contribute to a varied assort- 
ment of knowledge, but the composite result might not be sym- 
metrical growth. A certain breadth of general attainments 
should be the supporting background for any specialization. In 
true men this would guarantee breadth of sympathy. Every 
head of a department should have an appreciative and generous 
interest in all other departments. The flow of his enthusiasm 



15 

for his own subjects should make no current counter to other 
lines of instruction. 

Successful teaching still demands a forceful character. No 
agg'i'egation of attainments can be a substitute for the ability to 
awaken and inspire. This is sometimes forgotten. The sub- 
stance of collegiate instruction is now so often regarded as a 
bundle of specialties loosely associated that undue emphasis is 
often laid upon extent of acquirements, rather than upon teach- 
ing capacity. A University Faculty may properly enough find 
place for one who is fitted chiefly for research and for author- 
ship, but the man who is set to give collegiate instruction should 
be instinct with that quickening force which arouses and inten- 
sifies mental life. 

The teacher's efficiency is largely determined by his general 
strength. He commands attention and interest largely according 
to his intellectual ability, and is always subject to serious draw- 
back, if he seems a ''light weight." Though neither his weakness 
nor his strength may be attributable to his subject, yet the stu- 
dent's estimate of him is likely to affect his estimate of the de- 
partment. 

Besides this general capacity, a certain particular type of mind 
is wont to be conspicuous in any teacher of marked success; 
and since intellectual contact with varied mental types is most 
helpful to intellectual development, it must be considered a mis- 
fortune to the student, if he does not come into vital touch with 
many instructors. 

If the teacher is a whole man, he is sure, no matter what his 
department, to make himself felt in many ways that affect the 
student's thought, color his sentiments, and determine his ideals. 
The instructor's views of life and conceptions of manhood are 
sure to be discerned, and in some departments hardly could a day 
pass without bringing to an alert teacher many fruitful sugges- 
tions. They may arise from investigations in science, or dis- 
cussions in philosophy, or readings in literature and history. 
Narrow indeed would be the man who through incapacity, indif- 
ference, or a feeling of restriction to his specialty, should ex- 
clude those suggestions which may minister so richly to intel- 
lectual and moral development. 



16 

Colleges not a few have their cherished names of men whose 
intellectual force and vigorous personality were unspeakably 
valuable to successive generations of students, with a value some- 
what distinct from, and sometimes far transcending the measure 
of their attainments. Many an alumnus who has not held in 
memory the formal instruction of such men, acknowledges with 
a profound sense of obligation the character-shaping and mind- 
building influence of their manhood and their ability. Personal 
power should be a condition of higher educational service. With- 
out it knowledge cannot suffice. 

When colleges were accustomed to test their own graduates 
in tutorships preliminary to professor's chairs, there was less 
danger of disappointment in their personality. Now that Uni- 
versities with their advanced courses are competing for graduate 
students, there is risk of attracting to these courses and so to 
the profession of teaching, some who have a certain capacity for 
acquisition, but lack personal strength. Such have been some- 
times put in college chairs, to the serious loss of students, and to 
their own discomfort and almost inevitable failure. 

If the fit are not easy to find, the fittest at least will survive. 
The pedagogical succession will not fail. Fortunate is the col- 
lege in which men of real power are charged with subjects of 
instruction likely to draw the largest number of students. So 
long as John Bascom is at Williams College, no undergraduate 
can afford to omit political economy. Whether or not he cares 
for the subject, he will elect the man, or will show himself in- 
sensible to higher educational values. 

A weighty reason why the student should not fail of contact 
with the strongest minds lies in the tendency of such contact to 
develop intellectual deference. Authority in the teacher is best 
ensured when ample knowledge is associated with mental vigor. 
Sheer intellectuality makes its impress, especially when deduc- 
tions must be made from knowledge, and principles must be 
applied in thought and in life. The greater the student's ability, 
the more desirable is it that wholesome deference for strong men 
shall save him from any conceit of his own capacity which might 
hinder receptivity, or prompt him to indulge vagaries of thought 
which might be fondly deemed original discoveries. 



17 

Undue deference to authority is of course to be deprecated. 
The true teacher will not wish his pupil to esteem anything final 
because he said it. Nevertheless, a presumption in favor of 
the ''ipse dixit" is educationally wholesome. Temporarily and 
provisionally the fledgling may well take what is given him. 
Ultimately he must use his wings. 

The largest opportunity to impress young men should be that 
of the college president. But has not this been unhappily 
abridged through a changed conception of his functions ? Instead 
of being a teacher, coming into vital relation with the Senior 
class in the study and discussion of weightiest themes, he is for 
the most part an administrator, the official representative of the 
college at home and abroad, chiefly engaged in activities which 
do not give scope to his best powers. The presidents of former 
decades whose vigorous personality was felt in teaching would 
have been impatient of such a limitation, and the students of 
these days may well regret the new conditions. How fortunate 
was Garfield, to whom the recollection of his college always 
brought the picture of a long pine table with eager class-mates on 
its sides, and Mark Hopkins at the end! No wonder that the 
students of Harvard the other day gave hearty applause, when 
President Eliot, as a substitute for an absent professor, appeared 
to take charge of a class for the first time in thirty-five years! 
O temp or a, O mores! 

Compensation may in part be found in large use of public 
address and private counsel to guide the thought and inspire the 
sentiment of the college, and herein it is the privilege of his office 
to be ''primus inter pares." His colleagues, however, may con- 
tribute no less worthily to an invigorating atmosphere that shall 
foster goodly growth "of mind and m^anhood. Not every pro- 
fessor can deal as of old with every student. It is to some a 
change far from welcome, and the regret would be keener, did 
there not remain, apart from the lecture-room, many natural ways 
of access and service to young men. 

Certainly, what the teacher is in strength of intellect, in vigor 
and alertness of thought, in breadth of view and of nature, in 
culture of faculties, refinement of taste, and nobility of manhood, 
will outweigh and outlast all impartation of knowledge. It is 
sometimes said of those whom we meet in general society that to 



18 

know this or that person is a "Hberal education." Who then 
shall adequately estimate that giving of themselves which was 
the supreme service of those teachers that live in our hearts ? 

Changes in studies and in methods have come, and may come 
again, with needful return perhaps to some things unwisely 
abandoned, but the product to result from all our processes must 
be essentially the same — not merely an informed man, an in- 
structed man, a man of technical knowledge ready to be applied 
in a particular pursuit, but above all a disciplined, formed, culti- 
vated man, having usually some pre-disposition and preliminary 
equipment for special work, but a man so balanced and in good 
measure roundly developed, that, if occasion shall arise, he may 
bring to bear his trained powers with something of that versatility 
which should mark an educated man. 

The American college must not relinquish its essential mission. 
There was never a generation before whose eyes it was more 
necessary to exalt conspicuously and persistently the standards of 
genuine culture. To abandon these would be to forsake intel- 
lectual ideals for sordid materialism. 

The educational traditions of Colgate University bring no 
shame to its Alumni. Gratifying enlargement of opportunity has 
come to the undergraduates of to-day, but the more meagre in- 
struction of earlier decades was not altogether lacking in admirable 
quality, and some of the men who imparted it, whatever their 
limitations, for we too had our limitations, were endowed with 
personal power so real and quickening that lapse of years has not 
exhausted in us the sense or the worth of it. Some of us here, 
who were their pupils, then their colleagues, and now are their 
successors, have cherished an abiding desire to be, I do not say 
like them, but to be, each after his own type, sources of kindred 
inspiration to young men, and in our own time not unworthy 
representatives of liberal education. The effort is sustained not 
only by its inner reward, but by the assurance that you share our 
purpose to make the University ever more efficient in promoting 
sound and symmetrical training. 

Newton Lloyd Andrews. 

colgate university, 
hamilton, n. y. 



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